


The Wood Dark and Frozen

by ladyflowdi



Series: Seven Moons Series [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Attempted Kidnapping, Breastfeeding, Children, Harm to Children, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Male Lactation, Mpreg, Newborn Children, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Post Mpreg, Sexual Assault, Sexual Violence, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 21:37:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8913325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyflowdi/pseuds/ladyflowdi
Summary: John wakes to the sound of his daughter screaming.Clashing swords sing; the roar of battle. The gray-cold mist of magic rips through the air.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A vignette, set a few years after the events of the _Little Family_ stories. This is a little holiday treat for you all, in thanks for all the beautiful emails, comments, and posts on tumblr that I've received from those of you who love the Seven Moons universe and have shared that love with me. Enjoy!
> 
> Note: Please check the end notes for possible triggers.

John wakes to the sound of his daughter screaming.

Clashing swords sing; the roar of battle. The gray-cold mist of magic rips through the air.

He doesn’t know where he is. There’s a newly-born baby swaddled to his chest, crying high and loud. Next to her Michael is tucked in against John’s side, and he can’t focus enough except to see he’s bleeding, his little son is red down his front, his soft skin gone pale as milk. 

Sweat is burning in his eyes. No. Not sweat. Blood. Sticky in his eyelashes. His head is aching so badly he can barely focus.

Aloise, seven years old and stubborn and gorgeous and a bloody menace, is shaking him, fingers clenched in his cloak, screaming a long, piercing wail. Her eyes are wide and blank with terror, her face streaked with tears and dirt.

“It’s alright darling, I’m right here,” he mumbles, and Aloise’s scream swings up into a sobbing cry, “ _Daddy_ ,” and he pulls her close against him, against the swell of – against the new baby, his new baby, he was pregnant and now there’s a baby and Michael is silent against him and – 

They were traveling, it must be true, because they’re in what’s left of the royal carriage. The horses are dead and magic is pouring into the air with the force of the waterfalls behind the palace of the Seven Moons. There are men everywhere, men shouting and fighting, and hooves pounding the earth.

There is a man suddenly in front of them, sword in hand. 

“Well ‘ello there.” 

Thick southern accent. Rough clothes, practical in the winter weather, cloak covered in mud and snow. Dirty face and hands. Lies. The boots are too finely made, the sword expensive. Could have been stolen? Of course, but not in this case. Soldier for hire. 

Mercenary.

Aloise is crying against him with such force her body is shaking, and the new baby against his chest is wailing, and Michael is silent, head lolling on his shoulder. John has a sword but he can’t reach for it, not with his little son bleeding against him and Aloise clutching him so tightly, the lot of them sprawled there on the frozen earth. His children. _His children._

The sound of battle seems so far away. John scrambles back, pulling his children deeper into the destroyed carriage as the man presses. Caging them in, and unable to help it. “You know why we’re here, your highness?”

“What do you want?” he snarls.

“Not me, your highness. Lord James has unfinished business with you,” the mercenary says. Aloise screams against John’s neck, and the man starts to laugh. “And the kittens too, make no mistake.”

A sword appears in the man’s chest. Violently stroked, coated in blood. The mercenary stares down at it and John is glad that Aloise has her face pressed where she can’t see, keeps her there with his hand cradling the back of her head, because a man’s life leaving his eyes is something no child should ever witness. 

The man falls forward off the blade and Lestrade, growling like an animal, steps over him. 

No words are exchanged. Needless. Lestrade takes Michael from him, cradling him in his arms, and John presses his mouth to his daughter’s hair, right over the small curve of her ear. “Keep your eyes closed my darling, keep them tightly closed until I say.”

It’s a massacre. They’re dead. The mercenaries, and the knights of the Seven Moons. 

Aloise’s fingers are knotted in his cloak, and the new baby is crying with a piercing scream. Lestrade sets Michael down on the trunk fallen from the carriage, lifting his little shift, and his boy is bleeding, his little son is bleeding from a jagged puncture wound in his belly. John comes to his knees before them both and Lestrade says, “It’s alright, it’s okay, he’ll be alright,” except John’s heard Lestrade like that before, _it isn’t alright at all._

The battle is dying down. Six men, then three, and the snow is red and muddy, and there are dead bodies everywhere, and Sherlock is alight with magic, a hot and steady flame of the coldest gray ice, darkening his eyes until the whites are gone, and crackling between his fingertips. 

He is alpha, the moon and the stars in the night sky. He’s _everything_. John hears himself make a moaning sound that lifts all the hair on his body, and Sherlock answers, low and rough in his throat. He touches John, and the sobbing baby, and Aloise, so thin and small and shaking so forcefully that Sherlock lifts her into his arms. She twines around him, arms tight around his middle, and buries her face there against the plane of his chest. 

John’s head is aching, blood dripping continuously into his eyes, but it doesn’t stop him from taking his kit from Lestrade, kneeling on the frozen earth next to his son. John dresses the wound in silence, needle and thread and bandages, just as he’d done for his soldiers on the battle field. His eyes are blurring but he scrapes away the tears until it’s done, until Michael is clean and bandaged, safe in his uncle’s arms.

Sherlock is speaking, but it’s a rumbling blur against his back, until it isn’t, until Sherlock shakes him and says. “John, listen to me.” Just the sound of his voice is so comforting and deep in John’s belly, warming him through and through. “We’ve been attacked.”

John opens his eyes. “Mercenaries. James sent them after us.”

“We need to leave this place before the others come,” Sherlock says, his eyes so green in his white, white face. “Can you move?”

He’s so sore between his legs. He looks down in wonder at the tiny baby swaddled to his chest. “We were going to visit my family.”

Sherlock’s face does something complicated and awful. “Do you remember?”

John crumples. “I don’t remember having her. Sherlock, I don’t remember.”

“It’s alright,” his mate says, and kisses him, once, twice, three times, pressing his forehead there against the blood slicking John’s own. John breathes like he’s been running for days, to not give the hysteria lodged like a knot at the base of his throat a voice.

It isn’t, it isn’t alright, but what else can be said? 

There are four horses still alive, beautiful mares whose manes are braided with the flags of the mercenary group, red skulls and naked women and blood. The carriage is destroyed, so Sherlock and Lestrade pick through their belongings, trying to salvage what they can of the mess. John is numb where he’s sitting on the trunk, his little boy an unmoving weight in his arms. The tiny baby is wailing – she’s hungry, and cold, and Aloise is tucked under his arm, her eyes tightly closed as he’s told her. John closes his eyes, too, and presses his cheek to his daughter’s head.

 

.

“We’re in trouble,” Greg says.

In normal circumstances Sherlock would rail against his uncle for the impressively _stupid_ words that have just come out of his mouth, but in this case it’s an understatement. ‘Trouble’ implies they can regain control of the situation they’ve found themselves in. 

‘Trouble’ does not even begin to _encompass_ the danger they’re in.

 _His mate_. John, his soft hair streaked in red, his eyes foggy and unseeing in shock. His children. The girlchild, tiny and new and nameless yet. Aloise, sucking her thumb though she’s nearly eight years old. And _his son_ , swaddled in bandages where wood from the carriage had pierced his small round belly, cradled against John’s chest next to his new sister. His little boy. His little son.

“ _Sherlock_ ,” Greg snaps. 

Sherlock sucks in a sharp breath, and his uncle pats him on the cheek. “Let’s get the supplies we can, alright? We need to get back to the castle as fast as we can. This close to winter, it isn’t safe to be out this long. We’re a few days out from home, so we need to find a shelter for tonight, and tend to your family.”

He knows it’s true. Once, he would have railed at his uncle for talking to him like a panic-ridden _commoner_. He is the sovereign prince of the Seven Moons, imbued with the power of his birthright. He could turn ocean into sand and day into night. 

And right now, right now -- all he is capable of is thanking all the gods that his uncle is here and taking control.

He isn’t panicked. Or at the very least, it isn’t only panic eating through the lining of his throat, burning in his chest and boiling in his guts. The magic is crackling underneath the surface of his skin, unstable and strong, as it’s been since the arrival of the new girlchild. From the moment she came into being, born of his screaming mate, he had felt a _connection_ , different from that of his older children. And hadn’t John said it was so? Hadn’t he been telling Sherlock, for months, that this pregnancy was different? Hadn’t John been trying to forewarn in his own way – hadn’t his eyes glowed an alarming and unearthly blue when he’d been writhing with agony, trying to birth this child?

Sherlock had been riding horseback when the explosion sent the carriage carrying his family crashing to its side, and he had seen, with his own two eyes, the same bright flare of the unearthly blue moments before the carriage fell. 

Impossible. She’s but a week old, barely aware, her tiny eyes blank and new, her skin so soft and delicate. An infant. 

But his magic has only ever been gray. 

His children, also, have the same gray, though theirs is childhood magic, young yet and unruly, more for playing and mischief than the haze of blue that had encompassed the carriage. And his mate, though he is made of magic from the deepest fiber of his being, can no more wield magic than a houseplant. 

Impossible. And yet, Sherlock had fought the mercenaries and seen his son as a man grown in full beard and full armor fighting alongside him, superimposed like blue smoke over the battle. Had seen Aloise as the queen she would one day be, a snarl pulling her beautiful face into a rictus of fury. Had felt the magic roar through his body with such force that he had been swept along in it, until he’d opened his eyes and found only death around him. And when he had caught his breath, he had watched the spirits of those lives he had taken leave their bodies and go meet their ancestors, waiting in a dense crowd near the battle to welcome their children to the afterlife.

Sherlock is shaken to his core, but he can’t concentrate on what he has seen and the power that has channeled through him, only on protecting his family. John is bleeding, both from his head and from between his legs. Sherlock doesn’t know yet if it is the normal bleeding he has always experienced after childbirth or something worse _white as milk and dying in front of me._

They find clothing, blankets, and food – the water skein has been destroyed, but the snow will melt easily enough in the dented pot from the carriage. It’s only a matter of getting John onto one of the mares, his beautiful mate trembling and gripping Michael tightly, and he’s slurring as he says, “Where are we going?” 

Sherlock hushes him, tucking a blanket tightly around the three of them. He lifts Aloise into his arms and mounts the second mare, arranging his daughter side-saddle so her face is pressed to his chest and he can wrap her in his cloak. She’s such a good girl – her eyes are tightly closed as John had told her to keep them, and she whimpers in fright until he tightens his hold on her, snug there against him. 

He gazes down at his daughter and doesn’t see the furious queen who had done battle with him – he sees a terrified little girl, tears swimming along her eyelashes before trembling down her face. He presses kisses into her brow and her small fingers knot in his shirt at his back, where her arms are wrapped tightly around his middle.

“Shh,” he murmurs to her. “Keep your eyes closed, little one.”

“I will Papa,” she sobs. “I don’t want to be here anymore. Please can we go?”

Greg checks the mare packed down with all the supplies it can reasonably carry before mounting his own horse. He leads the other with reins in hand, and Sherlock does the same for John’s. 

They ride.

 

.

Hours pass, _eons_ , time dripping by with sticky slowness. 

John’s world is the weight of his son, pale to the lips in his arms, and the baby strapped to his chest, finally quiet. She’s hungry. His chest is wet with milk for her. 

He keeps looking for Aloise, though he _knows_ she’s riding with Sherlock. There, the long line of his alpha’s back and shoulders, his cloak dusted white with falling snow, just ahead of him. He has John’s reigns in hand, knotted with his own. Aloise is looking at him, her green eyes soulful over her papa’s shoulder, watching him as he’s watching her. Her face is pale, and she’s shivering even under the cloak Sherlock has over her. 

His mate looks back at him and slows the horse enough to tuck the blanket tighter around John’s shoulder, shielding Michael from the wind. The new baby, too, and Aloise touches John’s cheek and John kisses her palm, smiles for her. It’s all he can do.

A fine snow has begun to fall. The new baby begins to cry anew, and her tiny voice muffled in the snow growing thick and white, as if the entire world is hushed and silent and won’t be disturbed. 

This kind of snow has the power to snuff out lives one slow-falling flake at a time, colder and colder until the body grew warm again, until the blood slowed and the forest claimed each breath until there were no more to give.

“--hn? _John_.”

Sherlock is no longer on the horse in front of him, he’s at John’s side, holding onto the saddle to keep the mare steady. John looks down at him, at Aloise shivering beside him. His children are silent against him, and he leans down, close, until he can hear each of them breathing. The little one is whimpering, low and constant, and Michael is silent as the forest around them, though his chest rises and fall. 

“John,” Sherlock says again, with infinite care, like he does sometimes when he’s been trying to get John’s attention. He opens his eyes again without even realizing they’d fallen closed. “Let me carry Michael for a bit.”

“No.”

“Yes,” Sherlock says, and takes his son from him, even when John cries out. Aloise starts to sob, and Sherlock murmurs, “Hush _babyen_ ,” as he helps her scramble onto the horse. Aloise squirms and wriggles until she’s in the saddle facing him, wrapping her arms around John as much as she can with the baby. She’s startlingly warm, and big enough to shield the little one from the worst of the wind. She’s crying, his daughter, has been for what feels like hours. The tears track through the dirt on her cheeks.

He startles when Sherlock touches his face, traces his thumb along his jaw where the blood still dripped, tacky now and slowed. “Michael.”

“Will be fine with me,” Sherlock says, and kisses him in that achingly gentle way he has that makes John feel like spun glass, and twice as precious. 

John watches his mate mount his own horse once more, Michael in his arms, as if that small weight is nothing. He can just see Michael’s boots, the boots his Uncle Mycroft had gotten made for him for their journey south. His son had refused to take them off except for baths, even went to sleep with them – and oh, gods, his so-loved little face beaming up at John from under his covers, exploding into giggles when John found he’d worn them, dirty and mud-streaked, to bed. He’d squealed with delight as John tickled him without mercy until he could wrestle the boots off him. 

His son. His sweet baby boy.

There’s a sound -- hooves crunching on packed snow. 

The air around them suddenly crackles and hums. Sherlock. 

It’s their uncle. He’s without the second mare, and his face is grim determination. The magic goes out of Sherlock’s eyes, though the air is still prickling with it, ozone bitter and stinging on the skin. 

“You’ve found a place,” he says.

“Come on,” Lestrade says, and John lets himself close his eyes.

 

.

It isn’t long before he loses his grip with the world. 

The ache between his legs has grown to a fire with each passing hour on horseback. Aloise is a shivering weight against him, talking to the baby in a quavering, tiny voice he can hardly understand, only it seems very much like his little darling is consoling the whimpering baby, kissing her tiny face, her tiny head.

Everything is soft and fuzzy and dark. He can smell Aloise’s soft hair, and milk, and blood. He can hear the snuffles of the new baby. He can’t hear Michael, his little son, and calls out for him. Aloise has started to cry, “ _Daddy_ ,” and Sherlock is near, John can feel him, the beat of his heart, the magic rushing through his veins, lending them all his strength.

Eventually, they stop. There is a cliff thrust up into the sky, dotted with bare trees and snow, ice beginning to form at each bough. His eyes are so blurry, but he knows Lestrade has found shelter. A cave. There is a dead greeley, it’s thick fur enormous and black, at the entrance. Lestrade has struck it from its home for them.

Lestrade helps Aloise down from the horse, takes Michael’s small weight from Sherlock, and ducks down into the cave with them. John allows himself a whimper, just that much, and Sherlock says, “I know. Come on, now.”

He closes his eyes against the weakness of his body, before helplessly gazing down at his mate. “I don’t know if I can get down.” 

Sherlock’s expression goes blank, as it does when he’s furious and doesn’t want to frighten the children. That he uses it now tells John enough about the bad way he must be in, but it’s gentle hands that Sherlock lays on him to help him down from the horse. He takes John’s weight until John’s legs decide to support him, and even then doesn’t let go. 

“I’m sorry,” he wheezes, cradling the baby close even though she’s strapped and secure against his chest, and Sherlock _rolls his eyes_ , and John can’t help it, he laughs, thin and gasping as it is. “I am, though.”

“Now is not the time for your self-effacing nonsense,” Sherlock replies smartly, and helps him stoop low into the cave. 

The cave smells rancid, like wet animal and earth, and the first spit of the small fire as the embers catch. Aloise is pacing, crying silently, and Lestrade has Michael’s shift up to look at the bandage, spotted with blood. The baby lets out a piercing wail at the sudden warmth of the cave, and Sherlock sets John down near the fire, against the stone wall of their hiding place. 

Aloise crouches down beside them as Sherlock helps John open the swaddle. The baby needs cleaning, and changing; she’s so _small_ , a helpless little bundle, but right now there’s only one thing he can do for her. It’s instinct, an easy thing to open his shift and lead her to suckle. She’s so hungry she’s trembling with it, and John remembers another time when that was so – his Aloise, so tiny and new, in the wake of James’ first attack on their home.

She’s here now, watching him with tears streaming down her face, and he gathers her close and presses her face into his neck, where his scent is strongest. “Shh,” he mumbles. “Shh.” 

She wraps her thin arms around his neck. She’s cold, they all are, but the little cave is warming slowly with the fire, and it’s enough for now. 

 

.

John falls asleep while feeding the baby, and Greg is shamefully glad.

He’s got the cave secured, broken branches keeping the entryway closed from the elements and whatever animal might seek its shelter. The fire is a merry little thing, plumes of smoke curling up to the high ceiling – they wouldn’t be able to keep the fire all night, but until it warmed up it was safe. Snow is melting in their lone pot, and there’s bread and warm blankets, and now that John is mercifully asleep Sherlock has stopped growling. The children are finally starting to calm.

“It’s alright, lovey,” Greg murmurs to the new baby. He’d cleaned her, and swaddled her both in a clean nappy and the thick blanket all of Sherlock’s children had used as infants. Aloise, too; he’d checked her over, hands and feet and legs and arms, her belly and her back and her head. Bruised, scratched, but otherwise uninjured. It breaks his heart to see her trembling and shocky, her limbs jerking seemingly of their own accord. He’d seen little ones like this before, many years past when his law-brother had made war a sport, before Mycroft came sobbing into the world and changed Memnoc forever. 

He will never forget the way Aloise had screamed, her arms scrabbling around John’s neck, dirty and covered in blood not her own, as the man stood before them with sword in hand. He had watched John, blood pouring from the wound in his head, gripping his children to him, snapping and snarling. 

In that moment all Greg had seen was a younger John, his skin waxy and white, naked and sitting in a pool of his own blood with his newborn infant clutched in his arms. How he had swiped a knife at Mycroft, terrified and growling at them and unable to recognize that help had arrived. 

He never thought he’d see that look in John’s eyes again.

Greg had felt a rage come over him he had never experienced before, buried deep in the place behind his heart that made it pound with bloodlust. The part that made him alpha. 

He wishes now that he hadn’t killed all of the mercenaries who had dared attack his family, if only to have the satisfaction of killing them again.

He keeps gentle hands on Aloise, smiles for her and tickles her, tells her jokes until that awful blank terror recedes and he sees a shadow of his niece come back into that small stricken face, watches her roll her eyes, so much like her father. 

He’d warmed a broth on the fire and fed her, watched her little limbs shudder every few moments, until her eyes had finally gone heavy and sleepy. He’d tucked her and the baby in his great cloak near the fire, warm and already close to sleep, before turning his attention to Michael.

It takes Sherlock a moment to recognize him, teeth bared in a snarl and his son pressed to his chest, just as it’s been for the past two hours. He’s at John’s side, as he had been so many years ago, when Aloise was tiny and new and John was dying in inches before them. 

It’s too soon. The baby was unexpected – Greg had thought for certain they’d have plenty of time. They all did. 

They should have known better. 

Losing a parent was never easy, even when it was a woman as cold as Lady Hanna. Greg had never held it against his cousin, not really. She had done her duty as her father had demanded and mated with Lord Tyron, and borne him two children. That the children were both omega had been of little consequence; she had fulfilled her marriage contract. That she had been bitter and aloof for all the remaining days of her life did not change the fact that she had been John’s mother, the only mother he had ever known.

It was close, too close, both to the Great White Winter and John’s due date, but Greg had thought it would be alright. Two-day trip, a heavy, warm carriage filled with furs and heating stones. John had been eight months along. None of them could have predicted what would happen. 

It does things to an alpha’s constitution, the birth of a child, especially the birth of a child in a foreign place filled with the scents of foreign alphas. That his nephew has his teeth bared at him like an animal is no surprise. 

He waits until Sherlock recognizes him, until the rage dims in his eyes, before coming near. Little Michael is wrapped in a thick horse blanket. Greg’s loathe to expose him to the cold once more, but he needed to be checked. “Let’s take a look at your son.”

“Be careful,” Sherlock says, low.

Greg snorts as he carefully unwraps the little boy there in his father’s arms. “I’ll thank you to remember who played nursemaid when you didn’t want to tell your father you’d skinned your knees _again_.”

Sherlock’s expression thins to something normal, something recognizable, filled with annoyance and irritation. “I think this is a little more serious than a skinned knee, Uncle.”

“Bah. How about the time you fell out of the apple tree? And broke four bones?” he asks, baring the child’s belly to the open air and slowly unraveling the bandages. He’s bruised, with a cut across his cheek that will scar, and his little leg is dark with congealed blood, right under the surface. Nothing broken, Greg checks with gentle fingers, but a mighty and ugly bruise it would be before receding. It’s his belly that needs the most attention. 

A sliver of wood from the carriage had pierced the skin. Greg had removed it before John could see, but it had been large enough to cause damage. Not too deep to puncture the sensitive lining of his gut, thanks be to the gods, but deep enough to cause bleeding, too much bleeding for such a little fellow. The thick stitches John had put in are tidy and clean, though the skin is warm to the touch. John’s kit has a bit of ointment and he uses it now, smears it over the long line of the wound before gently bandaging it back up.

Michael hasn’t regained consciousness, and Greg is starting to worry. For now, he lifts the boy out of Sherlock’s arms and tucks him in against his sisters, close to the fire and out of the way for what Greg knows he has to do. He returns to his nephew’s side, watches as his fingers trace, with infinite care, along the blood rusted dry and dark on John’s jaw. The wound in John’s scalp had slowed to a stop, finally, and it’s deep but not fatal. Head wounds always bled horribly. “Sherlock, it isn’t like last time.”

His expression sharpens into a glare, hiding the fear Greg can see plain as day on his face. “Isn’t it?”

“Of course not. This is John’s third baby. He did fine after the birth. Four hours on horseback, though, would be enough to disturb any mother’s healing. He needs tending to.”

Sherlock’s expression grows hot, _furious_ , the posturing alpha. Greg waits him out, watches his nephew fight against himself and his instincts, until finally he rubs his face. His hand is shaking. “I know it.”

“Well, come on then. Let’s get him warm, yeah?”

Sherlock lifts his mate carefully, taking him closer to the fire where it’s warm, and closer to the children. John stirs, eyes opening, and Sherlock murmurs something into his ear, quiet and private. Greg averts his eyes, goes into the emergency kit for the supplies he needs. When he turns back John is propped on Sherlock’s lap, awake, and gazing at him with that expression Greg so loves – humor and caring and exasperation, John’s default – shrouded though it is with pain and exhaustion. “Well, this is embarrassing,” he croaks.

Greg rolls his eyes and brings him a cup of broth, wrapping both of his hands around it carefully. “Drink this and shut up,” he says, and John snorts, takes a sip. It’s hot, salty, and he sighs, eyes closing as he brings the heat of the steam close. 

Greg would never say this to his face, but the smell of him is overwhelming, omega and milk and babies, somehow _soft_ , though Greg knows John is _not_ soft, not at all. He smells like what he is, _mum_ to these kids, to that new baby there asleep with her sister, and it tugs at Greg’s heart, gentles his hands as he begins untying John’s clothes. “I’ll take care,” he finds himself saying. “Quick as a flash, alright?”

John looks over the cup. “You’ll do Lady Hudson proud.”

“What I wouldn’t give to have that old bag here right now,” Greg says. Sherlock growls a warning at the insult to his beloved Lady Hudson’s dignity -- just, Greg is sure, to see John smile. 

 

.

Sherlock is holding onto the anger and violence laced in his ribcage with an iron hand.

He is careful with John, always. Smiles at him, makes him snort as he bandages the head wound, deep and ugly and certain to scar, even with the stitches Greg had put in with a sure hand. He talks to his mate, keeps him calm as Greg works down between his legs, keeps John’s attention on him while his uncle replaces blood-soaked bandages with clean cloth. 

It was too soon to travel, after the baby’s birth. Only, they’d stayed to let John heal and let the baby grow and gain her strength for several days before embarking on the two-day journey. Winter was creeping ever-steadily into the northern realms, and they’d all decided it was time to leave, before they were trapped in a foreign kingdom for the duration of the winter.

John makes a sharp noise, and Sherlock says, “John?”

He’s clenched his eyes shut, biting his lower lip. Greg says, “Alright, it’s alright,” and John shakes his head once before shuddering and leaning more of his weight on Sherlock’s lap. “It’s alright,” Greg says again, this time to Sherlock. “I’m just going to replace some stitches, won’t take but a moment.”

John had torn during the birth, as he had done with all three of their children, along the same scar from before Aloise’s birth. They were fools, then, young and impulsive, running through the lower town without a care in the world. They were still impulsive, but young and foolish were long gone, sacrificed at the altar of age and wisdom, of responsibility to the children they had brought, together, into the world. 

Greg suddenly looks up, towards the makeshift door to the cave. He meets Sherlock’s eyes, before crouching down low between John’s legs once more, his hands quicker than before.

Sherlock cups John’s so-loved face, leans close until they’re pressed together, cheeks and temples, inverted and upside down but lending strength regardless. Pulling the pain out of his body everywhere they touch, until John is as relaxed against him as he could be. Greg works quickly, and his stiches won’t be as tidy as John’s had been on Michael, but it will have to suffice. He turns his mate’s head away from Greg’s work, focuses them instead on their three sleeping children. No words needed to be said, not when he can feel John’s love, a beacon of light right at the center of Sherlock’s world. Like turning one’s face into the sun. 

He kisses his mate, softly, and John snorts and tugs on his hair, though the line of worry is still deep and furrowed at his brow. “I need to feed her.”

“Yes,” Sherlock says. The little bundle tucked in close to her sleeping sister has been fidgeting for the past minute or two, as if she’s preparing herself for a good solid cry should no one notice she’s hungry. “Uncle?”

“Yeah, alright,” he says, and Sherlock doesn’t look – can’t – at the bloody needle he sets aside, the cloth he uses to wipe his hands. Sherlock sets John to rights as best he can, shifts their horsepack under John’s shoulders, propping him up. It’s an easy thing to lift the baby, slight and tiny as her siblings had been at birth, and settle her into John’s arms. 

Sherlock always marvels at John’s quiet patience and persistence as he unties his shift and cuddles the baby against him, inviting her to nurse. An unbearable swell of love comes over him for his beautiful mate and beautiful child, and he presses a kiss there to John’s temple, then down to the little brow of his new child. “Greg and I need to check the perimeter before nightfall. Will you be alright?”

John looks up at him, and it is only due to many years of marriage that Sherlock can see the panic he keeps at bay. “Of course I’ll be alright,” he says instead, with a huff. “Don’t be long.”

His uncle is crouched at the door to the little cave, cloaked and with sword in hand. It is a simple thing for Sherlock to touch his shoulder, turn the dark blue of his cloak white so he won’t be seen in the snow. He does the same for himself and finds his magic barely held in check, as it was when he was a young lad. It’s sparking between his fingertips, tingling – then burning – in the back of his throat. “How long?”

“Ten minutes, I’d say,” Greg murmurs. Sherlock glances back at John to find his mate gazing down at the baby, touching her cheek gently with his fingertips as she nurses. Aloise is watching him over Michael’s head, her tiny face crumpled as she cries, silently, and Sherlock’s heart aches to see her so. It is but a murmured word to silence what is about to occur, so that John and the children would not hear from the safety of the cave. To curb Aloise’s fear, but also to keep John from joining them. And he would, Sherlock knew, without a single doubt.

It’s bitterly cold outside, but Sherlock can barely feel it. He’d done his best to disguise their tracks, a simple spell to brush the hoof prints away, but the foliage had been disturbed, the mark of their horses trying to find footing on uncertain ground. 

He can just see them through the break in the trees, down at the bottom of the long sloping hill. Voices, and the whinnying of horses. There are seven of them. Four on horseback, three on foot. One is much smaller than the others, a woman perhaps, unarmed and trotting after the others on too-short legs.

His uncle silently unsheathes his blade. These mercenaries had murdered Algar, and MacKinnon, and Jones, their blood spilled red on new-fallen snow, without time to bury them and send them to the ancestors properly. For that alone death would come to them. 

That they had then dared to lay their hands on his mate and children, had tried to _take_ them, meant death would come to them yet still, but slowly, as befit those who would dare touch his family.

In his uncle’s eyes is a mirrored rage Sherlock is barely keeping in check. 

At last, to set it free. 

“We’ll keep the small one alive,” Greg says, and his mouth stretches into a smile.

They descend the hill. 

First, there are seven, and it's well matched. His uncle takes first blood, his right as head knight of the Realm of the Seven Moons.

Then, there are five. 

Three. 

Two. He tries to run. He doesn’t get far.

And finally. Finally. One.

She’s very, very young, an omega, not more than a girl. Eyes wide and blue. Terrified. She has every right to be, as she has just watched her companions slaughtered before her. 

Ozone is thick in the air, and Sherlock finds he can barely hold his magic in check. It is violence in him, his control on the head of a pin, and it’s only the girl’s coloring – dark hair lightened from the sun, bronzed skin, a southern cousin and so very much like John – that saves her from Sherlock’s fury. 

The girl tries to get to her feet, to _run_ , but Greg stops her with the blood-spattered point of his blade under a fragile chin, and says, “No.” 

The girl moans in terror and her bladder lets go.

The magic is clinging to Sherlock’s fingers. It runs like a current up and down his arms, prickles across his scalp, flashes under the skin of his palms. His eyes burn and he sees the girl down to the sinew, to the fragile beating of her heart, fluttering in her chest like a bird. To the second beat, low in her belly.

“We’re going to have a chat, you and I,” he murmurs. His magic makes his voice guttural, layered, as if four people are speaking at once. The children hate it, and even John, the one creature on this earth who loved every part of him, cringes when he hears it. 

“What’s your name?” Greg asks.

“Molyn,” the girl sobs. “I’m sorry goodsir, _I’m so sorry_.”

“And what do you have to be sorry for?”

The girl is crying heavily, rocking with each sob, her body curling up as if her knobby knees and thin arms could protect her. “M-my mother passed a few years ago and my mummy passed in the spring so my uncle took me because I didn’t have anywhere to go. I didn’t know what he did, I didn’t _know_ goodsir, he told me I was his now and I didn’t understand and he let his men hurt me so I ran away, but he found me and made me come here or else he would send me to the ancestors, please goodsir please I didn’t know!”

Greg _sighs_ , sheaths his blade with a violent song of steel-on-steel as he slams it into his scabbard. Sherlock leans back on his haunches, studies the girl in front of him. “How old are you?”

“I’m – I’m sixteen, goodsir.”

“And is your uncle among the men we’ve just slaughtered?”

Molyn shakes her head, tears spilling down her face. 

“Who is your uncle, girl? A name.”

“Sir Moran, goodsir, of the Realm of the Eagle.”

Just as he suspected. Sherlock finally lets the magic bleed from his eyes, his fingertips. “Do you share your uncle’s surname?”

“No goodsir,” Molyn whispers, wretched and small. “I am Molyn of Dershire. S-Sir Moran was my mummy’s uncle, and I thought that he was a goodsir like you, I thought he’d take care of me and but he _didn’t_ , he hurt me and I couldn’t run away, I tried so many times but he always found me.”

“Alright now,” Greg says, and reaches down to pull the girl to her feet. She stinks of urine and sour fear, but Greg just pats her clothes free of snow. “The man before you may not look it, but he is the crowned prince of the Realm of the Seven Moons. The caravan your band attacked contained his mate, prince consort and mother of the realm, and their children, including the yet unnamed newborn princess.”

Molyn seems to crumble from within, and she throws herself to her knees before Sherlock. He meets his uncle’s eyes over the sobbing girl’s head. Greg smirks at him and Sherlock rolls his eyes. Message received. “Alright, enough,” Sherlock says, and pulls the girl once more to her feet, as gently as he can. “ _Enough_ , child.”

“There has been grievousness done to you goodsir, horrible grievousness, I’m sorry, I’m _so sorry_ ,” she cries, and that’s all they can get out of the girl for the ten minutes it takes to get back to the cave.

 

.

John’s eyes widen when Sherlock and Greg re-enter the cave, the girl in tow. Molyn hasn’t stopped crying, and seeing the little ones, the tiny baby asleep in the curve of John’s elbow, sends her into renewed hysterics. “Sherlock?”

“This girl was with the mercenaries sent to attack us,” Sherlock says, as Molyn throws herself to her knees before John and begs his forgiveness, kissing them hem of his cloak over and over and crying into it. John stares at her bowed head, then up at Sherlock. 

Sherlock unclasps his own cloak from around his throat, unbuckles the sword from his hip. His head is aching something fierce in the aftermath of so much magic in so short a time, and his skin prickles and burns just under the surface. “Molyn of Dershire, chronically under-nourished, says she’s sixteen but she’ll be fourteen in the spring, probably April, more likely May. She’s allergic to lemn nuts so let’s be sure not to give her that bread your sister packed, her boots are at least two sizes too big for her, and she presented as omega four months ago, soon after she ran away from her uncle, but unfortunately not before they found her again. She was well into her first heat, which accounts for the wound in her shoulder, badly healed. Plenk blade, driven through her and into the ground to hold her prostrate; a punishment for barracks omegas. She is with child.”

Molyn shudders so hard her entire body convulses, and she drops her head to John’s knee, weeping so that she can’t even speak. John cards his fingers gently into Molyn’s matted, tangled hair. When he looks up at Sherlock, his eyes are glassy in his smudged and dirty face. “Sherlock, what in the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know,” he says, as his uncle replaces the barrier to the relative safety of the cave. “And we won’t know anymore tonight.”

Molyn scuttles back at Greg’s approach, but John catches her gently so she won’t go far. “Shh, it’s alright. No one is going to hurt you here,” he says gently. “Calm yourself, little one. I won’t ask if you’re hungry. We have the lemn bread, yes, but there’s also coffee, and the frankly awful broth our uncle has made.”

“Oi,” Greg says, but it’s just for show. He gives the girl a little smile, as if she isn’t hunched into herself, tears pouring down her face. He ladles the soup into a cup and crouches down at Molyn’s side, cup in hand. “Dershire is in the Realm of the Horse Lords. This man is Prince Jounhin, your liege lord, and you will do no harm to him or his children.”

Molyn shakes her head, face crumpled, and Greg tucks a finger under her chin, lifts it. “Say these words.”

“I w-won’t hurt him or the children, I swear I won’t, I couldn’t ever,” Molyn whispers, and Greg smiles and pats her shoulder. “Alright, then. Here, drink this slowly, and we’ll see to getting you some dry clothes and a spot to sleep.”

 

.

There are magics of the House of the Seven Moons that have always been out of Sherlock’s reach. 

He has not admitted his inability to summon these magics out of embarrassment perhaps, though fear played a decent part. Keeping John and the children they had made together safe has been his top priority since the day John was given to him like a gift, bells at his ankles and tears streaked down his face. He had done everything he could think of to tap into the true magic of his birthright – meditations, systems to layer his spells, concoctions that gave him terrible headaches but didn’t allow him to touch the magic his father wielded so easily.

Sherlock had been living in a limbo of his own making, unable to reach the next level in his magic, for nearly five years. He had learned the spells, of course, memorized the techniques, but no matter how hard he tried, he had never been able to light the fuse and let the spark catch into the flame of power. 

Until now. 

It is grief that wakes him from a deep and exhausted sleep, so suddenly that he can’t breathe under the pressure of his heart breaking in his chest. His magic is burning at his fingertips and his tongue, the backs of his eyes, and he wails, a sound so awful and wretched that he doesn’t recognize it as himself. 

Aloise and Michael are tangled together, and his uncle is snoring fitfully against the stone wall on the other side of the fire, chin on his chest and arms and ankles crossed. The girl, Molyn, is curled up in a blanket near him. And John, his beautiful mate, is asleep with his head down near their infant daughter’s. Her tiny hands are curled closed against her cheeks, the hat Lady Hudson had knit for Aloise so many years ago pulled low over her head to protect her from the cold air. She is suckling at her fingers, content to wait for her mother to know she is awake and hungry.

They are all of them frozen, their chest’s still, and Sherlock thinks that the worst has happened but no – the fire too is still, flames licked up and stuck as if the world has stopped. 

He drops his head into his hands and weeps as he hasn’t since he was a child, because Mother Earth has finally come to him, as She had come to his father so many years ago. She fills him full, and for the first time in his life he can sense the earth breathing, the very stars above them moving in the night sky, the rotation of the earth as She moves through the night and to the sun once more. He can feel the waves of the oceans and the wind moving through the mountains, the rustle of the trees growing and the sound of paws on earth of the animals of the world finding food or settling down to sleep. He is welcomed into Her embrace, Her child forevermore, and in return for his love and devotion She has shown him what is to become of his beloved family.

They will be nearly home when the mercenaries catch up to them. James will be with them, resplendent in all his finery atop a gleaming black horse. There will be a battle _fire pain blood rage agony_ and Sherlock will fight for the lives of his family like a madman. 

Molyn will be the first to be cut down, two lives ended with one stroke. The children will be taken, Aloise kicking and screaming and Michael weak and crying, as their uncle is pushed to his knees and beheaded before them. This, too, will be Sherlock’s fate, but not before he watches his mate thrown to the ground, his clothing ripped from his body and the baby from his arms. James will come down from his horse in all his splendor as the children sob for their mother, and John will beg him _please not the children, please don’t hurt them_ without understanding that James is crazed and triumphant, that he is finally enacting the revenge of his heart that he has waited so many long years to have. 

The last thing Sherlock will see on this earthly plane will be James plunging his sword into John’s belly, the dark spurt of blood violent against the white snow, before shoving John’s legs open there on the frozen earth, the children screaming behind him. 

Sherlock can’t breathe.

He gasps for air that won’t come and stumbles to his feet, pushing out of the cave. It is bitterly cold outside, the flakes frozen where they are falling in swirls in the eerie darkness, and he drops to his knees and retches violently into the snow. 

He vomits and coughs and sobs for his family, for his beautiful mate violated and murdered before their children, for his daughter and son and the fate that will come to them. Aloise kept as a plaything, raped and tortured by the princelings of the Wood; Michael twisted with suffering by James’ hand into a dark and evil thing. The baby will be snuffed out before she has even begun to live, left to freeze to death at her mother’s breast.

He screams until the rage is all that he is, until he is nothing but wrath and the murderous alpha he keeps caged behind his heart is set free. How could he have ever thought he could never do this? It comes to him so naturally, a whisper of a flame burning into an inferno, as if he was waiting all his life to be whole. He calls to the runes which had been, until now, hopelessly out of reach, and reaches deep where the magic is held quiet in the womb of the earth. It is an easy thing to pull it gently, carefully free.

It burns.

Fire lights him up. His veins and his organs and his eyes and his throat. He is dying, even as the magic knits him whole, and Mother Earth invites him to see another path.

He sees his adored and cherished children. Aloise, a woman grown with children of her own, queen of her birthright and resplendent in her power. Michael, as Sherlock had seen him during the skirmish with the mercenaries, with a dark beard and shining armor, his eyes crinkled at each corner. His sister’s Hand in all things, quick to laugh and full of joy. 

He sees the new baby, Eolande, as a beautiful young woman with long blond hair curled into a knot at the nape of her neck, beaming at him from over a cauldron with impish glee. Sees her as the enchantress she will one day become under his steady and loving hand, and how her power will change the world and bring it into a time he doesn’t understand, interconnected and whole.

He sees, to his surprise, the children who will come to him in two years’ time, conceived during the most painful rut of his life and born in love. He sees them as they will be, Rhiannon a famous singer renowned throughout the Ten Realms, Foster a stunning beauty who will bring together the Realm of the Blue Rock and the Realm of the Seven Moons in loving marriage. 

The magic is burning him as it has never done, overwhelming him with its power. He sees shadows of more children who will come as the years go on, though they are yet formless and without name. All he can see of them is John nursing tiny little bundles, tickling tiny little toes, older and wiser and so beautiful Sherlock’s heart aches with love for him. 

Sherlock sees the children of their children, and their children as well, his line spread out across the world, living and loving until they, too, are gone.

The cycle will renew itself and they will be born again, he and John, and meet again in the darkness. 

For one moment, just a fraction of a moment, Sherlock sees them as they will be, in a time past magic and realms. It is a shabby room with a warm, glowing fireplace and mismatched chairs. There is a skull on the mantel, and thick curtains at the windows keeping out the winter chill, and around them the clutter of their lives fill their home _computer kettle phone blog violin_. He will play the instrument and John will sit in a soft red chair listening, his hand resting on the big swell of his belly, calming the little one’s kicks. Calming Aloise, who is ready to come back to the world and be their adored and beautiful child once more. 

It is a tender thing, to lay their fates gently back into the earth, hide it away from prying eyes. And it is peace he feels; peace and the quieting of anger and fear, even as the knowledge of all he’s seen grows distant and vague.

He forgets – the names of the children he will have, the day his father will die, John’s face as he listens to Sherlock play the violin. He forgets and is grateful for the forgetting, until he doesn’t even recall what he was meant to forget in the first place.

In the knowledge’s wake is a power so vibrant, so powerful under his skin, that he feels alight with it. It is no longer the dreamy, formless gray it has been his entire life. 

He reaches into the earth once more, plucks at the runes until they do his bidding. He is the wind, the feathers of each bird and every falling snowflake. He is the moon low in the sky.

Sherlock looks up to the blanket of stars above him and calls into the night.

 

.

John comes awake to his son saying, “And then we go _boom_.”

Across from him, on the other side of the fire, Michael is sitting on his uncle’s knee as Greg feeds him broth with a spoon, recounting the entire tale as if his uncle hadn’t been there. A knot builds in John’s throat, gets harder to swallow as Michael waves his tiny hands so like his father, describing to Greg how, “The horses go nnneeeee and then they fall and then the whole world was booming! And then I was sleeping and Papa was giving me kisses because he loves me and then Daddy was giving me kisses because he loves me too, and then I was sleeping a lot and my tummy hurt and then I wake up! And now my tummy went grrrr-ble because it was hungry and your soup is so good unca just so so mmmmm.”

Greg catches his eye from across the fire, and when Michael sees him awake he beams. “Daddy! I eating soup!”

“Hello darling,” he murmurs, and Michael climbs down from his uncle’s lap and limps to him, his little boy, his so-loved little son. John sits up just enough to let Michael cuddle in close, as he always does in the mornings, tucked in against John’s side. There isn’t as much room now because of the baby, though Michael clearly doesn’t mind, kissing her tiny head with a big smack and nosing in close to her cheek in a way John has seen alphas do with little ones his entire life. “Where did your papa get off to?”

“Aloise had to do pees,” Michael says sensibly from under John’s chin. John buries his face there in his son’s hair, strangles on the tears in his throat until he can swallow them down, and presses two soft kisses to his son’s fringe, even when Michael wrinkles his nose, “Daa- _ddy_.”

The girl, Molyn, is watching from the other side of the cave where she’s lying on her side, wrapped in the horse blanket, her eyes but slits in the gloom. Michael whispers, conspiratorial, “I think she went boom too, Daddy.”

“She most certainly did,” John says. “We’re going to help her. Is that alright?”

Michael nods, seriously. “Her name are Molyn and she nice and she say she can make me a ball with a liver because she knows how.”

Aloise bursts into the cave, her pigtails newly and neatly combed, her small cloak dusted with snow, and smiling from ear to ear. Not for the first time, John is surprised, and so grateful, for the resilience of children. There was hope that she wouldn’t remember this time as deeply as John feared she would as she got older. 

She beams at her brother and says, “Did you finish eating? There’s squirrels even though it’s snowing!” and Michael jumps up like he wants to run outside, and John says, “Out of the _question_ ,” and after a good ten minutes of whining, through which John doesn’t budge and tries very desperately not to cry because his children are _fine_ , they run further into the back of the cave together to explore with their groaning and exasperated uncle in tow. Greg would be a lot more convincing if his eyes hadn’t gone red and wet when Michael had beamed up at him and asked for a ride on his back.

Sherlock crouches next to John, and for the first time since they set out to the Realm of the Horse Lords, he’s smiling. Satisfaction warms his so-loved face, and when he kisses John it is deep, and soft, and achingly tender, the backs of his fingers to John’s cheek. “Alright?”

“Mmm,” John says, and tugs on the curls that have escaped the knot at the nape of Sherlock’s neck. “What’s got you so pleased?”

Sherlock leans over him to gently kiss their new baby’s temple. “This little girl is called Eolande, John.”

And she _is_ – of course she is. John sighs, slow and soft, and gazes down at the baby. “You’ve been different, since her birth.”

“She is going to change the fabric of this world,” Sherlock murmurs. He catches John’s gaze and smiles, runs his fingers gently over John’s face, the wound in his scalp, his lower lip. “I love you so.”

“As I love you,” John says, and cups his mate’s cheek, thumbs at the stubble all along his jaw. “Are you certain you’re alright?”

Sherlock smiles at him, and there is such warmth in his eyes, such tenderness, in a way John doesn’t think he’s ever seen before. Sherlock simply nods, turns his face to kiss John’s palm, then the corner of John’s mouth, his chin, his jaw. “I’m going to check on the horses, begin preparing for our journey,” Sherlock says, low and soft. “Molyn? Come here, please.”

The girl jumps at her name, cringes inward, but when Sherlock lifts his gaze she calms her trembling chin and comes to kneel at their side. “Yes goodsir, how can I help?”

“You will help my mate prepare himself as is befit his station. Warm water, and help him clean the dried blood from his face.”

“Yes goodsir!”

John searches Sherlock’s eyes, and finds confidence, understanding, approval. He smiles. “Have the children help you. It’ll keep them out of trouble,” he says, as if this is just a normal morning and the children are underfoot and ready to begin the day. As if everything is going to be fine, and their circumstances aren’t terribly dire.

The baby stirs in her swaddle, whines even as John tucks her into his clothes, helps her latch with a thumb at her tiny chin. When the baby finally begins to suckle Sherlock smiles and, with one last lingering kiss to John’s temple, stands to begin gathering their packs. He calls for the children and they come racing to help. 

Their uncle, despite trying to keep a positive attitude, is clearly worried, and John understands. It would be a hard ride today, no mistake, in freezing temperatures, with a newborn, a wounded little boy, and a pregnant girl. The cold doesn’t affect John as badly as it once did, but he’s a southern cousin through and through, and would never grow used to the bitter cold of the air this far north. It didn’t help matters that he’d just given birth less than a fortnight ago, and was still weak and healing. 

Dire circumstances indeed. 

He doesn’t miss the way Molyn watches him feed the baby, the way her chin trembles anew. Pregnant. Gods alive. Thirteen summers old and with child, raped through her heat until it took. 

John murmurs, “Come here.”

Molyn startles, cringes in on herself. “I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for. Come here, now.”

She approaches, skittish and terrified, watching as John adjusts the baby’s latch, her tiny feet kicking under her swaddle at being interrupted during her nursing. “Being omega isn’t weakness.”

Molyn looks up under her fringe. “Sire?”

“That’s what they told you. That you were weak, out of control and begging to be bred.” 

Molyn shudders, looks down at her knees. He watches as the tears the girl had been keeping at bay swim along her eyelashes before rolling down her face. “Yes, goodsir.”

“They were wrong,” John says. He grabs Molyn’s hand, hard, squeezes. “Look at me, now.”

The girl is helpless but to obey, even as the tears run, unchecked, down her face. “Goodsir,” she whispers.

“You are stronger than you know. You survived your uncle, the animals who hurt you, who conscripted you into this life. You did not deserve what happened to you,” John snarls. “You are omega, yes, but you’re strong, _so strong_. You didn’t give up, you survived the worst of men’s evil and here you are now, helping your lord and your goodsir bring their children back home.”

Molyn is quietly sobbing, and John senses Greg come back in, the children startled behind him. He ducks down until he can see Molyn’s face, until he forces the girl to meet his eyes. “If you prove yourself worthy of praise, if you comport yourself as a good and just young woman and help my children survive this nightmare, we will extend sanctuary to you. I will teach you how to be a mother to your baby, and should you want it you will work in our household, fed and sheltered and cared for in our home. Your child will grow with my own, and will be educated with my own, and one day will have any station they want, as loved and protected child of the house of the Seven Moons.” 

Molyn ducks down until her forehead is pressed to John’s hand, where he is still gripping Molyn’s fingers so tightly. She is crying so hard she can’t speak, and John meets Sherlock’s eyes over her head. Sherlock is smiling at him, that small twitch of his mouth that never fails to warm him, to make him feel proud to be his mate. To know that his mate is proud of him.

He tugs Molyn’s curls gently, waits until the girl has lifted her tear-streaked face. “In return for this kindness and love from your liege lord, you will tell us everything we need to know about these mercenaries, and how to stop them. You will tell us all you know, and help us stop them from carrying out their plot. Do you agree to these terms?”

The girl nods, hard and fast, and John cups her face until their eyes meet. “Do you agree?”

“My lord, I agree and thank you from the bottom of my heart for your love,” she sobs, and drops her head once more to his knee.

 

.

It isn’t even an hour later, as they’re readying themselves for the hard journey home they are about to endure, when Sherlock lifts his head from where he’s lacing Aloise’s boots. John can’t help the sound he makes, because Sherlock’s eyes glow a blue not found in nature, so bright it hurts to look at him. 

It is the same blue that had blinded John in the mirror his fourth month of pregnancy, burning his own eyes. The same blue that had sparked between his fingers, burned the tips with their flame. The same blue that he had dreamt of every night until the day Eolande was born. 

She stirs in his arms, as if listening to the same sound as her father.

“Papa?” Aloise whispers, and starts to cry. She pats his cheek to get his attention. “Papa? What is it?”

Sherlock smiles. “There’s no need to cry, little one. Our kin have arrived.”

“‘Our kin?’ What in the blazes are you on about?” Greg demands, unsheathing his sword. “And why are your eyes like that? Sherlock—” but whatever he’s about to say is swallowed by the sound John instantly recognizes as dozens of hooves on frozen earth, of armor roaring, of blades unsheathing. Michael starts to cry and John lifts himself up, reaching for his sword with his free hand, even as Molyn plants herself behind Greg at the entry to their little cave.

Sherlock laughs, bright and loud.

Outside, Lord Memnoc bellows, “Where are my grandchildren?”

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings: This story contains harm to children, murder of OCs, a non-explicit rape scene that happens in a foggy future Sherlock envisions, a character who was raped and became pregnant as a consequence, and canon-typical violence. If any of that is a possible trigger for you, please either don't read, or be mindful as you're reading that these events do occur.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed the story!! You can keep up with me on [tumblr](https://ladyflowdi.tumblr.com/), I'm pretty active over there, and post a LOT of Sherlock stuff :) Happy Holidays to you all, and a joyful and beautiful New Year!


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